


To the Moon and Never Back

by patster223



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/F, First Meeting, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10059662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patster223/pseuds/patster223
Summary: Except for Lucretia, there is no one alive who knows the complete history of the Bureau of Balance. That is because it all starts with her meeting Maureen. Sure, the history of the war and the relics and the red robes precedes that, but the Bureau always began here: with her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "You said one day I would celebrate the day I fell in love with you." Also inspired by [this art](http://rabdoidal.tumblr.com/post/157357144040/taz-lady-week-day-5-angst-ive-been-thinking).

Maureen Miller is a scientist: the greatest of her generation, every generation before hers, and every generation yet to come. 

She is also a hopeless romantic. Maureen chastises Lucretia when she points out the contradiction.

“Are the two so mutually-exclusive?” Maureen says. “You sorcerers—so invested in maintaining the divide between magic and science, romance and…whatever it is you think I do all day.”

Lucretia stretches out on the grass. This is before Wonderland, so she doesn’t have to give single thought to the aches and pains of an old body as she lies beneath the stars with Maureen.

A lot will change in the coming years. But right now, they are simply lying on the grass, Maureen idly playing with Lucretia’s hair as they debate the merits of their respective fields yet again.

“Supposedly you’re finding us a new base of operations, but all I ever see you doing is playing with your telescopes,” Lucretia says idly. “Unless you plan on us operating on the _moon,_ I’d say you’re slacking off.”

Maureen rolls over so that she’s lying on Lucretia’s chest. The motion disrupts Maureen’s headscarf and a single strand of hair falls out, whispering against Lucretia’s cheek.

“Do you want me to lasso you the moon, Lucretia?” Maureen says with a grin.

“Is this you trying to convince me that you’re _not_ a hopeless romantic?” Lucretia asks. Still, her face flushes—and even though it is dark, she’s sure that Maureen can see it.

Maureen seems to know how to see everything.

“Any romantic can entertain dreams of the moon,” Maureen says. “But I’m a _scientist_ —which means that I can actually follow through.”

Lucretia raises an eyebrow. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Simple. I'll build our base on the moon.”

“I’m being _serious_ here, Maureen—these decisions are not trivial, I have the Bureau to think of-”

“As do I,” Maureen says. She finds that same curl of Lucretia’s hair and begins playing with it again. “You have to admit it’s a practical location for a secret organization. Who’s ever going to look for us on the moon?”

“Practicalities be damned,” Lucretia says, groaning when Maureen tugs at that strand of hair. “We cannot be two lesbians who live on the moon.”

At that, Maureen gives a long, low chuckle, and Lucretia finds herself resigned to the fact that, yes, they _will_ be two lesbians who live on the moon.

That’s not why Lucretia agrees to it though. Maureen was right when she said that no one would think to look for them on the moon. It’s purely a practical decision.

Maureen is supposed to be the romantic one here, after all. Lucretia had tried romance once, tried giving her whole self to another person, but it had nearly consumed her and she isn't eager to try again.

Even so, Lucretia can’t help but notice that it’s different with Maureen. Maureen is not a black hole that consumes others, but instead a sun that sustains those around her. And yes, perhaps those are poetic, romantic thoughts to have about someone, but--it's not as if Lucretia's ever spoken them aloud. It's not as if she waxes rhapsodic about their first kiss--partially because, well, she cannot _remember_ their first kiss.

That sounds harsh and uncaring, but it's important to know that Lucretia is neither of these things. To be honest, she’s not even sure if Maureen remembers the kiss. Maureen might have been just as distracted by the war as Lucretia was when it happened.

Lucretia does know this much: that kiss wasn't beneath a starry sky, or on the Miller’s lab above the Stillwater Sea, or in Maureen’s anti-gravity room as they floated weightlessly between each other. They _have_ kissed in all of those places—those just weren’t their first kisses. No, their first kiss probably happened in-between endless battles and meetings and research as they tried to—literally—get their organization off the ground. That kiss had probably slipped in quietly, unexpectedly, a balm against the frantic energy of their chaotic world.

Lucretia isn’t sure if that’s how it happened, but she likes to imagine that it was. She likes to think that something other than fear and wit and desperation—that something almost like love—went into making the Bureau of Balance. Maureen thinks that that’s a romantic thought, but in Lucretia’s mind, it never was. It’s just the kind of origin story that makes everything that the Bureau—that Lucretia—had to do later feel a bit easier to bear.

After all, it was all for the greater good. Or, that’s what Lucretia tells herself as she sits with Maureen, Lucas, Cam, Captain Bane, and Boyland as they try to figure out the logistics of creating a second moon.

“There’s a security issue here,” Cam points out. “Namely, that people might be a _bit_ suspicious about a second moon suddenly existing.”

“Hide it behind some mountain or something,” Boyland says, more focused on lighting his cigar than the conversation at hand. “Even if they get suspicious, it’s not like they can follow us up there.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Thanks to our advancements, the world’s technology is getting better all the time,” Lucas says smugly. He was younger back then, and so _very_ self-assured.

It was before the Crystal Kingdom.

“Unfortunately, Lucas is right—we cannot rely on humanity’s ignorance to save our asses,” Lucretia says gravely.

“Then we create ignorance,” Maureen says. “That’s why we have the void fish, isn’t it?”

Stunned silence follows her words. Even Lucretia’s mind prickles at the thought, as if it were brushing up against static.

“Is that even possible?” Lucas finally says.

Captain Bane shrugs. “If we can make people forget an entire war _,_ I don’t see why we can’t make people forget that there’s only supposed to be one moon.”

“Of course we can do it,” Boyland says, taking a halfhearted puff of his cigar before stubbing it out angrily. “But _should_ we?”

“Now, I don’t like the moral implications of it either, nor the idea of the scientific setbacks that erasing this knowledge could create,” Maureen says. “But it’s the best protection we have.”

“For you, sure,” Boyland sighs. “Maureen, your kin is sitting right here at the table with us. You can talk to your son without worrying if half your words are static. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful my family doesn’t remember the war, but that doesn’t mean I want them forgetting anything else.”

“It would just be the moon though, right?” Lucas says.

“Yeah,” Cam says. “But only if we’re able to stop at that. The void fish may not be a relic, but that kind of power has a thrall of its own.”

“We’ll be able to stop,” Maureen says—maybe lying, maybe not. Lucretia isn’t sure. Because the fact is, they don’t stop there. They make people forget wars and moons and disasters and people—they make the earth forget Cam and Captain Bane and Boyland.

And maybe, Lucretia wonders—when she sees Magnus in the halls one night, clutching his head as if lost in a shadow of a memory—they have done still more than that and aren’t even able to remember it.

But it’s all for the greater good. Lucretia knows that. Maureen knows that—and maybe that makes her less of a romantic than Lucretia thought.

 _Or maybe,_ Lucretia thinks, _‘for the greater good’ is a hopelessly romantic notion of its own._

Perhaps that’s why she and Maureen fit so well together—it’s the one romantic gesture they’ve always been able to perform.  

 

***

 

Except for Lucretia, there is no one alive who knows the complete history of the Bureau of Balance. That is because it all starts with her meeting Maureen. Sure, the history of the war and the relics and the red robes precedes that, but the Bureau always began here: with her.

They’re in a local town hall. Maureen’s son tries to speak, but his voice is too weak and stumbling for anyone to pay him much mind. But Maureen—Maureen is bright, jagged, ruthless as she steps in to verbally cut down a pontificating nobleman. They’re discussing the war, its ruin—and yet no one but Maureen seems to want to discuss the heart of the issue: the artifacts that are trying to destroy them all.

“Where did you see one?” Lucretia asks Maureen after everyone else files out of the pub. She pulls out her map and unfurls it onto a table. “Show me.”

Maureen’s eyes instantly catch on the red lines drawn on the map, the photos and notes that adorn it. She leans in closely, her nose nearly touching the paper as she traces Lucretia’s handiwork.

“You’ve been tracking them,” Maureen realizes. “How did you get all of this information?”

“Divination magic helps,” Lucretia says, nodding at her staff. “Now, where did you see one?”

Maureen points to a town on the map and then continues to scan the rest of it, hands flitting across it as if they gaining some sort of power from the information drawn there.

“Magic,” Maureen says, as if she’s had a revelation. “Of course—we need magic.”

Maureen’s son wrinkles his nose. “No, we don’t.”

Maureen chuckles. “Mind you, Lucas, it can’t get us all the way there, but it’s a good enough start.”

Lucretia clears her throat. “A good start?”

Maureen pulls a pen out of her pocket and begins drawing seemingly random lines between the different relic sightings until they form a—dear God, is that a _pattern_?

“Magic needs science,” Maureen says with a flourish, after literally connecting the dots that Lucretia had managed to find.

“Is that what we are?” Lucretia says dryly, nearly startling herself as she hears the words coming out of her mouth. Dear gods, is she _flirting_?

Maureen grins. “Actually, most people call me Maureen. Maureen Miller.”  

“Lucretia.” She looks down at the map and smiles, despite herself. “Perhaps a partnership is in order. If it goes as well as I hope it will, I get the feeling that someday we’ll celebrate this day, Maureen Miller.”

 _Maureen Miller._ Lucretia could say that name all day. She has always been fond of alliteration. Maureen Miller, the Bureau of Balance—they always fit so neatly together, in Lucretia’s mind. Even when they both eventually fell apart, even when their jagged edges stopped them from sliding together as neatly as Lucretia had once imagined: they still fit.  

 

***

 

Lucretia and Cam are the first reclaimers. They are also the first casualties of the Bureau of Balance.

Look, neither of them were going to win The Suffering Game. The only game either of them had a shot of winning was The Escape Game—and only Lucretia had it in her to even _try_ to win it. Maybe Cam was too hopeful to acknowledge those odds or maybe he was too selfish —Lucretia will never know. But here they were: either they both died in Wonderland or Lucretia made it out. It was simple math. Simple science.   

That’s how Lucretia justifies making a deal that ends with her stumbling back through the Felicity Wilds. The only way Lucretia knows how much time has passed since she entered Wonderland— _truly_ passed, not simply been taken—is that when she looks up at the sky, she finds two moons where there had once been one.

The second moon's glaring white face matches the color of Lucretia’s hair. The light is harsh against her newly old eyes. When Lucretia returns to that moon, it's like stumbling onto a new planet with a new body: everything foreign and unfamiliar--except for Maureen. Maureen hugs her tight, twisting at the same lock of hair that she tugged at over a year ago—but _gods,_ it feels like longer. Twenty years longer.  

“What happened, Luc?” Maureen asks.

“A sacrifice,” Lucretia manages. “Twenty years of my life. I suppose it doesn’t make much of a difference in the end. Now there’s simply less of an age gap between—between us-”

Lucretia takes a gasping breath. She will not cry, not here in this empty hanger—but she can sink further into Maureen’s arms. That much she will probably always allow herself.

“Still quite the looker. Now you’re just a silver fox too,” Maureen says quietly, sincerely—trying to be reassuring despite the way her hand trembles on Lucretia’s back.

“Maybe I should get twenty years knocked off my life more often,” Lucretia says. She tries to make it a joke, but it doesn’t sound like one. Her words barely sound real at all.

Maureen’s arms tighten around Lucretia.

“You’re too important to talk that way,” Maureen says—and whether she means _important to me, important to the Bureau,_ or _important to the world_ is perhaps inconsequential. They all seem to mean the same thing, when it comes to Lucretia and Maureen.

“I know,” Lucretia says. She knows she’s too important. That’s why she sacrificed Cam—isn’t it?

“Magic _needs_ science, Lucretia," Maureen whispers fiercely.

Lucretia attempts a smile. “Is that what we are?”

She feels Maureen’s head shaking against her own. Footsteps echo down the hallway as Bureau clerics rush in to help.

“No,” Maureen sighs wetly. “We’re just a tragedy, darling.”

And Lucretia doesn’t want them to be, but they are, they are, _they are_.

After Lucretia is stabilized, they ask her what happened to Cam. Lucretia simply says that he didn’t make it. It’s the truth, even if it’s not the whole truth.

Maureen probably knows as much, even if she won’t press Lucretia for more. After all, they’ve always kept secrets from each other—on a secret moon base, everyone does. You just have to trust everyone is doing it for the right reasons. Or, other people do anyway. Lucretia typically doesn’t. But that’s why she’s The Director.

Maureen always admired her skepticism as much as she was annoyed by it. She said that Lucretia would have made a good scientist. Maybe, maybe not. All Lucretia knows is that when it really counted, she wasn’t as skeptical as she should have been.

They’re in Lucretia’s office, having just gone over the latest modifications to the moon base. Both of them are tired, but Maureen’s exhaustion is tinged with a nervous, excitable energy—just like when they first met, when she saw Lucretia’s map.

“I need you to promise me something,” Maureen says intently.

“What?” Lucretia says. She doesn’t blindly agree to promises—not even with Maureen.

“You and Lucas are the only family I have left,” Maureen says. “If anything should happen to me, I need to know that you’ll look after him.”

“What’s brought this on?” Lucretia says warily.

“This is dangerous work, Luc,” Maureen explains. “Isn’t the stranger thing that we didn’t already have a contingency plan for this?”

“I suppose so,” Lucretia says, because, well—it _is_ strange. They’ve always planned for every eventuality, every possible universe: even the worst ones. “Very well. I will look after Lucas if that becomes necessary.”

Of course, Lucretia should have known that there was more to that request than simple contingency planning. Because a week later, Maureen dies. A lab accident, Lucas says. Lucretia doesn’t know if he’s lying—all she knows is that Maureen _was_ , when she’d brought up her death as if it were just a passing thought instead of a real possibility.

That’s okay. Lucretia lied too, in the end. She breaks her promise to Maureen like she’s broken most others. Lucas steals a relic, Lucretia sends in the regulators rather than show him mercy, and then Lucas is dead too.

Perhaps Maureen would feel betrayed, perhaps she would understand. All Lucretia knows is that she can’t plan around that kind of thing anymore—she has to concentrate on doing what’s necessary for the living.

And she does. She lies and protects what she can; she saves some lives and not others; she misses the dead and fights for the living; and she keeps moving forward: until their quest is finally over. And after the world—and so many beyond it—nearly ends, after the reclaimers save the day and the Bureau unravels, Lucretia stands atop the moon: the last one there.

At least, she was supposed to be the last one.

“Hello, Luc,” Maureen says—or rather, Maureen’s spirit says. There is no body—only a speck of dazzling light that leaked out of a crack in space. But Lucretia would know that voice anywhere.

“…Is this real?” Lucretia asks, unable to part from wariness as the dust still settles from their final battles. “Or are you an enchantment sent to trick me?”

The speck of light bobs up and down as if shrugging. “Cast detect magic if you need to.”

Lucretia’s breath catches—only Maureen wouldn’t feel betrayed by such a question, would understand the overwhelming need for evidence. Lucretia knows in that moment that it is truly her. Still, Lucretia casts the spell and finds no enchantment, nothing but spiritual energy.

“You must hold some kind of sway in the astral plane,” Lucretia says, unable to feel surprised by that prospect. It _is_ Maureen, after all.

Maureen only laughs. “I helped get Kravtiz out of a pickle when the astral plane was going to shit. He owed me one.”

“You...used your favor to visit me and not Lucas?” Lucretia says with a frown. This, she _does_ find surprising.

“Believe me, I thought about it, but…the last thing Lucas needs is to see me right now. He needs to focus on moving on.”

“And I don’t?”  

“You’ve never had trouble moving on, Lucretia,” Maureen says, not coldly or harshly—because she was the same way: always looking forward. The reminder of that alone eases something tight and hot in Lucretia’s chest. For the first time in months, it feels easier to breathe.

“I lied to you,” Lucretia whispers.

“And I lied to you. But I’m not sorry for it. Are you?”

No. They both did what they felt needed to be done—and even if it meant betraying each other, didn’t Lucretia once say that that was romantic in its own way?

“I miss you,” Lucretia admits, tears finally— _finally_ —falling freely from her face. “It was lonely up here without you.”

The light drifts closer to Lucretia, hovering before her face. Even in this form, Maureen is dazzling, obscuring all the shadows that lurk atop this moon.

“Sometimes I wonder if I should feel angry,” Maureen admits. “We sacrificed so much, betrayed so many people—even each other. But it always felt worth it to me.” She chuckles. “I can’t believe you were right.”

“Right about what?”

“You said one day I would celebrate the day I fell in love with you,” Maureen says. “And despite everything—I _do._ ”

“I—“ Lucretia blinks. “I never said that.” _We never said that word to each other—despite everything._

“Not those exact words,” Maureen concedes. “But I’ve had a long time to think about this in the astral plane. When we first met, you said we would celebrate that day—the day we formed the Bureau.” Maureen’s light softens to a dim glow. “Lucretia, on that day, we created something beautiful together. Isn’t that some kind of love?”

Lucretia sobs. “I…I loved you, Maureen.”

“And I loved you,” Maureen says, shining brightly enough that Lucretia can feel warmth against her cheeks. “Magic needs science, Luc.”

“Oh, I don't know about that. Perhaps they’re not as dichotomous as we might think,” Lucretia manages to tease.

Maureen laughs. “I knew you’d figure it out one day.”

Yes, Lucretia thinks she finally has. They were never just science and magic, logic and romance—they were _never_ just a tragedy.

They were simply Maureen and Lucretia. And during war, conflict, and the end of the world, that had always been enough.

 


End file.
